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The central puzzle of the dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, who died Sunday at the age of 91, was that until recently he retained admirers in Chile and abroad, especially among people emerging from Communism. He masked his corruption and brutality by tailoring his level of repression to just what he needed to retain power and prestige.

Pinochet was head of the army in 1973 when he led a coup against the socialist Salvador Allende, whose chaotic presidency had been further destabilized by the Nixon administration. In the first three years, Pinochet's regime killed almost 3,000 people. Thousands more were tortured. The vast majority of the victims were nonviolent.

At first, Chileans, exhausted by politics, bought the government's stories that the victims were terrorists killed in confrontations with police. Then Pinochet made the repression more subtle. Killings were selective — but that was enough to take care of the few brave dissidents. He distracted the rest of Chile with an artificially strong peso that made imports cheap and allowed even the middle class to buy color televisions and cars. The protests did not begin until 1983, after the peso crashed.

Pinochet also exploited Chileans' need for legality. In 1980, he passed a constitution providing for a plebiscite in 1988 on whether to hold free elections — robbing the coming protests of their power. When the plebiscite arrived, the government tried to rig it. But even members of the junta objected, and Pinochet was forced to hold elections in 1989. The opposition won.

Once Pinochet was out of office, his reputation slowly disintegrated. Although his second wave of economic policy worked, the center-left governments that followed deepened reforms and brought their benefits to average people, refuting the argument that a Pinochet was necessary for economic discipline. Chileans who argued that the human rights abuses were exaggerated were shown irrefutable proof.

Investigators also discovered at least $28 million that Pinochet held in more than 100 secret bank accounts, most of them in the United States. At the time of his death, he was under indictment for kidnapping, torture and murder, as well as corruption-related charges of tax evasion and possession of false passports. Time has revealed that the once-admired Pinochet was accomplished only at holding on to power.

A version of this article appears in print on November 11, 2006, in The International Herald Tribune. Today's Paper|Subscribe